UNDERCOVER ON THE EASTSIDE

Vancouver Officers On Project Haven Allege Staff In Rat-Infested
Rooming Houses Are Involved In Drug Dealing, Welfare Fraud

VANCOUVER - Undercover officers from the Vancouver Police Department
entered a Dickensian world when they undertook what the lead officers
said was an unusual investigation aimed at activities inside rooming
houses on the Downtown Eastside.

Instead of targeting dealers on street corners or in alleyways, as
they have often done in the past, the VPD penetrated three of the 70
small hotels that rent single occupancy rooms in an area infamous for
its drug problems.

Paying their room rent with welfare cheques and passing themselves off
as petty thieves, drug addicts and street people, the VPD agents
emerged after seven weeks undercover nursing open soars from bedbug
bites and with horror stories about rats, crack dealers and hotel
staff whose only idea of room service was to point out the rooms where
drugs could be bought.

The agents also recommended 17 drug-trafficking charges, multiple
counts of welfare fraud and business licence reviews by the city, and
they made allegations that could cost two bars their liquor licences.

The Crown is reviewing that material, and no one has yet been charged,
but police said they are confident they have made a major breakthrough
against crime in the Downtown Eastside.

"Project Haven was unique," Inspector Bob Rolls said at a press
conference yesterday in which police released a video of undercover
officers talking about their experience. "It was the first and only
investigation of this type that we are aware of. . . . It also
involved a significant amount of personal risk for these officers. We
placed these officers in harm's way because we are simply not prepared
to stand back while the citizens of the [Downtown Eastside] continued
to be victimized."

Insp. Rolls said the Astoria Hotel on East Hastings, the Lucky Lodge
on Powell Street and the Gastown Hotel on Water Street were targeted.

And in all three hotels, he said, investigators found some staff
involved in illegal activities.

"We determined that the owners, managers or desk clerks of all three
premises were complicit in drug trafficking," Insp. Rolls alleged. "In
the very first premises that our officers attempted to rent a room,
the manager said, 'You'll have to come back later [the desk clerk] is
out selling heroin right now.' . . . Drugs of all types were readily
available. Management directed officers to specific rooms to purchase
drugs."

Managers and owners of the three hotels denied the police allegations
yesterday.

"That's ridiculous," said a clerk who was behind the front counter at
the Astoria Hotel.

"I don't understand where this is coming from. I don't believe it at
all."

The clerk, who said she'd worked at the hotel for a few months and had
stayed in one of the rooms for several months before that, said she
wasn't aware of any drug dealing on the premises.

"I'm shocked anyone is saying that," she said. "The first thing
[management] told me, if they look like a drug dealer, don't let them
in."

At the Lucky Lodge, the clerk who manned a small desk at the top of a
narrow, battered stairway shook his head and waived his hands to
indicate that he knew nothing about drug dealing.

"No, no, no," he said."Probably just welfare fraud. They take
kickbacks," a resident said as he passed the clerk's room.

But the clerk denied that as well.

The owner of the Gastown Hotel, who monitors activities with several
security cameras, said the police are wrong to tarnish the name of his
establishment.

"These are totally false," he said of allegations that staff are
complicit in drug dealing.

He said drug dealers stay in the hotel at times, but he asks them to
leave whenever he becomes aware of them. "Sometimes it takes a little
while to send them out peacefully. But they are always asked to leave."

He also denied that any staff at his hotel was involved in welfare
fraud.

But Insp. Rolls said police believe it is standard for staff to buy
welfare cheques for less than face value from people desperate for
quick cash.

"In one case, $487 in welfare cheques was purchased for just $50," he
alleged.

"The manner in which the welfare cheques were dealt with strongly
suggests that this is a regular practice. One desk clerk bragged that
their premises scammed 40 cheques a month."

The provincial government wasted little time cutting off welfare
cheques sent directly to operators of the Astoria, Lucky Lodge and
Gastown Hotel for rent on behalf of welfare clients.

Anne McKinnon, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Employment and Income
Assistance, said the ministry promised to support any findings from
the police operation.

"So the ministry is no longer sending any money directly to those
three landlords," Ms. McKinnon said yesterday.

Insp. Rolls said the undercover officers found living conditions that
included bedbug infestations, toilets that hadn't been cleaned for
weeks, and drug dealers who contacted them within minutes of checking
in.

Insp. Rolls said the undercover officers encountered people "like some
of the worst characters out of a Charles Dickens [novel]. I've got no
use for them."

He said the police would like the hotels shut down or brought into
compliance with health, welfare and liquor control laws.